(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Justice is prioritizing revoking citizenship from some naturalized Americans who commit certain crimes, according to a DOJ memo posted online.
In the memo dated June 11, Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate is giving U.S. attorneys wide discretion to decide when to pursue the denaturalization process in order to “advance the Administration’s policy objectives” as the Trump administration pursues its ongoing immigration crackdown.
While attorneys are urged to prioritize cases involving individuals who “pose a potential danger to national security,” the memo also states that they can seek out “any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.”
“The Civil Division shall prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence,” Shumate wrote.
Some of the cases U.S. attorneys should pursue are those against individuals who have engaged in torture, war crimes, human trafficking, and human rights violations, the memo says.
While the denaturalization process and requirements are codified into law, immigration attorney Rosanna Berardi says the memo changes how aggressively the Department of Justice plans to pursue these cases.
“The memo clearly signals that DOJ is going to pursue more of these cases, and not just against terrorists or war criminals, even cases involving undisclosed criminal records or procedural errors during naturalization are now on the radar,” Berardi told ABC News. “In the past 28 years of my practice, the government has generally left naturalized U.S. citizens alone. This is a departure from that mentality.”
According to a report conducted by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in 2020, the government pursued denaturalization cases at a very low rate, averaging only 11 cases per year from 1990-2017.
But those cases skyrocketed under Trump’s first administration. In 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it intended to refer 1,600 cases to DOJ for persecution, the report says.
The DOJ memo also lays out four other priorities for the department, which include “ending antisemitism” and taking legal action against sanctuary states and jurisdictions.
Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
